Chapter 768: The Black Desert

The draconian noticed Fang Yi's frown. "What's the matter, Fang Yi?"

"This report mentions a pyramid. Are these pyramids like the ones in Earth culture?"

The draconian shrugged once more. "I don't know myself. I haven't been to the black spirits' world, and neither do I know these pyramids you refer to."

Fang Yi put away the report. "Regardless, thank you for the information. Do you know how I can find this pyramid?"

The draconian replied, "The sage knew you would ask this question! He said to follow the moonlight."

Fang Yi frowned. "Follow the moonlight?"

Fang Yi quickly understood what the sage meant. There was no day in the world of black spirits, only eternal night. The moon hovered in the air as though it were fixed in place, and was therefore the best marker with which to locate himself.

Fang Yi wondered, "Just how is it that your sage knows where this pyramid is located despite being on bad terms with the black spirits?"

The draconian smiled. "The sage has been alive for far longer than you or me, and he knows secrets that have been lost to time. All the neighboring races have wondered about the black spirits, and they've managed to piece together some information about their mysterious world."

Fang Yi turned and looked toward the distance. "Do you happen to know how the others are doing?"

The draconian replied, "There's no need to worry about your teammates. They're all very strong, and they've all managed to dispatch their respective enemies. They're also heading toward their targets' worlds at the moment."

Fang Yi smiled, reassured. "In that case, it's past time that I set off, too."

The draconian frowned. "You won't rest, Fang Yi? It looked like you exerted yourself quite a bit just now."

"There's no need. I won't let them leave me behind." Fang Yi passed through the wormhole and entered the black spirits' world.

As the draconians' report had indicated, he found himself in a black desert. The night sky was starless; the only illumination came from the moon hanging high up in the sky.

The three thousand worlds seemed to obey no scientific principles—each world had its own astronomical quirks. It was possible to look up and see the night sky in some worlds, but the star charts that were produced from different worlds never agreed with each other.

In the past, there were scholars who had tried to look deeper into this mystery. Some guessed that the three thousand worlds belonged to separate galaxies, or that they were all microscopic regions within an entirely new universe, but anyone who had ascended toward space, hoping to uncover the truth behind the three thousand worlds, had never returned.

In the end, no one dared to pursue this mystery further.

Fang Yi grabbed a handful of sand from the ground—even the specks of sand were black. Purplish-black flames lit up in front of him. They gave off no warmth. In fact, they made him feel even colder than before, as though he were slowly melding into the endless night, as though he were traipsing into the abyss. Each flame was as tall as a human.

𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

As the draconian sage's report stated, Fang Yi was attacked immediately as he entered the desert.

With a low shout, Fang Yi shot forward. Hurled by wind and storm, he launched his spear with incredible force. Fang Yi's spear sent wind howling and lightning flashing through the skies.

He thrust his spear forward once more, so quickly it left dozens of afterimages in all directions. The spirits burst apart. They were indeed the level of regular- or mutated-grade lifeforms, but there were so many of them that it would be impossible to kill them all.

Fang Yi took to the sky, trying to avoid the spirits' attacks— but unexpectedly, the spirits floated up with him.

"It looks like I have no choice, then. [Heaven's Judgment]! [Tiger's Howl, Dragon's Bellow]!"

Fang Yi's spear took on the aspect of a dragon of the winds and a storm tiger as he charged forward. The dragon of winds stirred up an entire cloud of black sand and turned into a black dragon. The storm tiger lit up the entire desert with lightning.

The two beasts tore apart the spirits and made a path forward. Fang Yi ran into the distance, his steps buffeted by wind and crackling with lightning.

According to the draconian sage, he was supposed to follow the moon.

Suddenly, however, the sands in the desert began to shift like the tide. Before Fang Yi appeared a gigantic vortex. Considering he was in the air, Fang Yi didn't expect to be affected. Suddenly, however, an insect emerged from the center of the vortex. It looked like a mix between a scarab and a centipede, with a chitinous exoskeleton giving off golden light. It had two sharp claws, and it seemed particularly ferocious.

The golden scarab opened its mandibles and tried to swallow Fang Yi whole.

Fang Yi snorted. He thrust the spear in his hand, wreathed in wind and lightning, into the scarab's mouth. A bystander might have thought this to be a suicidal act, but Fang Yi's strike caused the scarab to keen in agony.

Lightning danced on the scarab's exoskeleton as Fang Yi pierced its body whole. The spear flew out of the other end of its body, and the will of the world's voice rang out in his mind.

[You successfully killed a peak-grade golden sand scarab and obtained its soulshard. By consuming the flesh of the peak-grade golden sand scarab, you may receive one to ten peak gene fragments.]

Is it a peak-grade lifeform, then??Fang Yi had heard that kings of the realm were able to tame peak- or even disaster-grade lifeforms, but he hadn't expected to encounter such lifeforms so quickly.

Fortunately for him, he was lucky enough to have a soulshard drop.

While he was drinking with Zhang Lie, he heard Zhang Lie bemoan the lack of soulshards since entering the third realm.

Fang Yi felt similarly: the rate at which soulshards were dropping seemed to be far lower than before. He and the rest of Team Zenith had had to kill a whole bunch of genetic lifeforms in order to amass gene fragments, but not a single soulshard had dropped.

Therefore, Fang Yi was quite surprised to have obtained a soulshard on his first kill here.

He thought that killing the peak-grade golden sand scarab would be the end of things, but it was just the beginning. All around Fang Yi, within the pitch-black desert, countless vortices emerged. It seemed as though all the sand in the desert were gathering around Fang Yi as one scarab after another rushed toward him.

"[Shadow and Light]!" At that very moment, Fang Yi morphed into countless clones, each of which moved independently through the battlefield. As wind and lightning exploded in the air, the scarabs were sent flying.

Nevertheless, they clung on to life stubbornly. Even when their heads were blown off, they refused to die. Even if they were cut in half, a new head would spring out of one end of their bodies, as though they were earthworms.

Wind howled and lightning flashed through the skies. The purple lightning lit up the black desert, and the wind blew black sand into the sky. The combination of wind and lightning generated a frightening force that seemed to be able to penetrate space.

Buffeted by the wind, the particles of black sand gained fearsome penetrating power, and they shot through the scarabs' exoskeletons like bullets, producing an opening through which lightning could spear through their bodies, destroying their cells and vitality, finally killing the peak-grade sand scarabs...